Wednesday, 26 December 2012

A couple of days ago I wrote about how one of my local pubs had been flooded on Saturday night. Herculean efforts obviously took place as the Bridge Inn opened today — there was still the smell of dampness in the air and no food was served, but Kenny and Rachel plus staff had moved mountains (and dealt with the post-traumatic shock of the flood) to make sure we could enjoy Boxing Day drinks. And I’m sure Jim will be able to enjoy his Exmoor Ale this afternoon (by the time Jim came in I had moved on to my other local before attempting to cook the traditional bubble and squeak). That’s it really — I just wanted to make a point, once again, about how pubs are more than places to get a few beers down. They are as much as part of our community as the church or — dare I say — the local Coop. Cheers.

Sunday, 23 December 2012

There’s a moment in the film The Battle of Britain when you see Londoners crowding together in a hall after they’ve been bombed out of their homes (sadly the hall gets it not long after). An old boy wanders about, muttering to himself, mantra-like ‘they’ve got the Rose & Crown, they’ve got the Rose & Crown’.

I thought of this scene last night when all of a sudden my wife started seeing panicky messages on Facebook about the River Barle breaking its banks in Dulverton. We’re at the top of town and so I wandered down to find that the river had ‘got’ the Bridge Inn. Its downstairs lights were out, the doors were closed and water was flowing over its low wall, through the beer garden and into the pub. The firemen were out, the garage opposite was also flooded, as were several other properties around.

This morning we walked the dog past and I spoke with Kenny the landlord. He’d been optimistic he would be open again by tomorrow but now he wasn’t sure when beers would start flowing again. The cellar had not been flooded and in an attempt to lighten things I asked him if there was much beer left in the casks. What about Jim I then asked. Jim is a lovely old chap who lives nearby in sheltered accommodation and most days takes himself to the pub for a couple of pints of Exmoor Ale. He was on Lancasters in the war and also supports Arsenal so we’ve got a lot to talk about. He and the Bridge will miss each other for a few days — this is something that those who directly or indirectly talk down the pub forget: the pub is a home from home for many, even those of us with a warm (or not so warm in our case) comfortable house.

For a few days I will miss the Bridge, I will miss the general chit-chat over nothing in particular, a perusal through the papers, freshly pulled Proper Job or — if I’m feeling flush — a bottle of Duvel or Orval. It’s only for a few days but happening just before Christmas it couldn’t have come at a worse time for Kenny and his family. Hopefully though they’ll be open again before the end of the year, but it is at times like this that one remembers that the pub is much more than a place to drink.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Been some good books this year, but for me five stand out
and here they are in no particular order. I loved Tim Webb and Stephen
Beaumont’s gorgeous World Atlas of Beer with the duo’s incisive and elegant
styles of writing bringing the beers of the world to sparkling life allied with
lush, luxuriant and lively photography. This is the beer book as a backpacker.

Then there was Chris Arnot’s Britain’s Lost Breweries and Beers, an elegiac and yet uplifting social history of those that were once at
the centre of their community but have now gone. It might have been a yomp
along memory lane but the lacrimosa was absent — some of the beers now
vanished, Arnot suggested, might not have been that good. It’s a valuable
record — Brian Glover’s The Lost Beers and Breweries of Britain covered a
similarly melancholic subject but I have not seen it yet, but knowing how good
a writer Brian is I will look for it in the new year.

Then there is Pete Brown’s exceptional Shakespeare’s Local.
I did my first serious book review for the Telegraph of it and devoured it in
one sitting. Even now I have been listening to Tony Robinson reading extracts
from it on Radio 4 and continue to enjoy it. The strength and skill of the book
is that Brown brings to life Southwark, seeing it through a beery eye and
putting the George at the centre of things. I love it and think it’s his best
book yet.

You will probably have a job getting these three books in
time for Christmas but not with my final two choices, which are by the same
writer and can be downloaded onto your Kindle within minutes. Evan Rail’s Why Beer Matters and In Praise of Hangovers are beer writing taken to a new
philosophical plane, beer writing as a matter of musing, personal recollection,
philosophical probing all brought together with an erudite and personable
writing style. They are essays, elegant in their design, but also robust in the
way in which they celebrate beer and its universe. In Praise of Hangovers was a
particularly welcome company on a train journey I took from Pilsen to Munich
back in September — a crowded carriage, a slight mustiness in the head after
the Purkmistr festival the day before, the growing carousing of
Oktoberfest-bound travellers, a desire to go home (though it would be another
four days before that happened) and a disinclination to have another beer for a
while. That essay made me feel much better and I remembered it that evening as I
wandered open-mouthed around Oktoberfest’s carnage.

So there you are five great books and I haven’t even
mentioned Mitch Steele’s book on IPA and Stan Hieronymus’ For The Love of Hops,
which are for 2013.

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

Why is collaboration with a brewery important to me? Why do
I do it? There’s an element of ego — it’s satisfying to see your name linked
with a brewery that you admire, a brewery that makes beers that you (and others)
enjoy. It’s good fun to hang around a brewery for a day and find out how beer
is brewed, rub loads of gorgeous hops such as Chinook, Bullion and Amarillo
between your hands and take a Marianas Trench of a sniff and just for a day
leave behind the potentially ruinous world of trying to put words together so
that they form some sort of sense. I also love beer, love certain beers more
than others and when I find a brewery that is willing to riff on a style that I
love then I want to join in. There’s a sense of ‘let’s see what happens’ when
certain combinations are tried; there is also a sense of experimentation, a
sense of creativity. I can’t brew but I can devise a recipe and someone like
Jon at Arbor (which is where I was on Friday) is happy to let me loose. That’s
it really. Oh and the beer we have made will be called Bock Star and we’re
saying that it’s an India Pale Bock and it will be released sometime late in
January. That’s it really.

Monday, 17 December 2012

Christ I am so sick of people trying to work out whether a
beer is craft or not, whether the beer that they might enjoy in their glass is
made by one man in a bathtub or created beneath the whip of an evil, moustachioed
corporate type (and who doesn’t probably pay their fair share of tax either).
Good beer is good beer, though if you are the sort to boycott a company because
what they do offends your view of the world then good luck (I must admit to a
small chuckle when I saw that someone had written that they thought ‘we’ are boycotting Amazon
when it came to discuss buying a certain beer book — who’s ‘we’ when they are
at home?).

My mock outrage is fuelled by the furore (smallish I suspect
in the context of the worldview of beer) over a press release issued by the
Brewers Association the other day. It is entitled Craft Vs Crafty and goes on
to state (or maybe restate) what a craft brewery is, making specific
connections to breweries that are owned by big corporations.

This is the part of the press release that jumped out at me
and bit my nose: ‘Witnessing both the tremendous success and growth of craft
brewers and the fact that many beer lovers are turning away from mass-produced
light lagers, the large brewers have been seeking entry into the craft beer
marketplace. Many started producing their own craft-imitating beers, while some
purchased (or are attempting to purchase) large or full stakes in small and
independent breweries.

‘While this is certainly a nod to the innovation and
ingenuity of today's small and independent brewers, it's important to remember
that if a large brewer has a controlling share of a smaller producing brewery,
the brewer is, by definition, not craft.’

I was sent the press release and my first thoughts were of
the UK regional breweries that are using the word craft and crafty for beers
produced on both their big kits and pilot micros. Greene King ‘craft’ their
beers, while others like Brains, St Austell and Wadworth have small ‘craft
breweries’ to produce excellent beers such as Brains’ series of IPAs, St Austell’s
incredible array of one-offs for their beer festival and Waddies’ Beer Kitchen
range. And the other day I enjoyed Thwaites’ Crafty Dan, a 6% American-style
Pale Ale produced on a micro kit. Are these beers craft? I don’t give a
monkeys. I enjoy Crafty Dan and Shepherd Neame’s Double Stout as much as I have
recently loved Arbor’s Dr Rudi’s IPA, Otley’s Oxymoron and anything by Wild Beer.

It’s up to the BA to say what they like and I suspect that
there might still be a vestige of David vs Goliath in their mental make-up,
something which you could probably apply to the mind-set of some within a beer
group closer to home. Goose Island are owned by the Evil Empire, but I still
love their IPA, Matilda and Bourbon County amongst others, so I couldn’t give a
flying fig whether it was classified as craft or not. I don’t care very much
for the effluent of Pabst Blue Ribbon (is it still a hipster’s ironic choice?) but on the other hand I have also been
under whelmed by some US (and UK) self-proclaimed craft breweries.

Thursday, 13 December 2012

A long straight bar, solid wood tables Guardsman-straight, arranged in rows, the
elements, the hardness, an Atlantic coast bashed by the waves, Cornwall,
Brittany, Kerry, take your pick, the sense of being rooted to one place. The
glitter of glasses from behind the bar, tubular stainless steel from where the
beer flows; signals and signs and symbols dashing through the air and by this
way drawing in the drinkers. Moeder Lambic Fontainas.

Babbling voices raising like steam from a street grill in
some 50s noirscape, guttural Flemish, fluted French, English flitting in and
out like bats twirling through the air of a summer’s evening. Bowls of stew,
sweet, fulsome, meaty, a sleet storm of flavour; stoemp ladled out, creamy,
buttery, root vegetable, potato mashed and smashed; rough and rugged cuts of
charcuterie and pungent cheese that stills the restless tongue for a while.
Moeder Lambic Fontainas.

The beer selection, chalked up, V for Victory, the
resistance fighting back perhaps. Tapped into glasses come along the likes of
Cantillon’s Kriek Lou Pepe and Fou’ Foune, De Ranke’s scorchingly bitter Hop
Harvest 2012 and the same brewery’s ever dependable Cuvee, plus many others,
whose names stand out on the blackboard, chalked up there: V for Victory.
Moeder Lambic Fontainas.

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

On pale ale I’ve been engaged in
research and contacted several brewers here and in the US on their definitions,
the idea being to build up a composite picture of what seems to me the broad
spectrum of the contemporary beer style with reference to its past (but not
dwelling on it). I’m especially indebted to Simon Yates, head brewer at
Marston’s in Wolverhampton and the chap who’s been producing essential
information on the hop varieties used in Marston’s single hop series. He has
supplied me lots of information, but what brought a wry smile to my face was
his mention of Watneys Pale Ale. It’s not a beer I ever had (same goes for Red
Barrel — were they the same?), but even in my non-beer drinking youth I was
aware that there was something off about Watneys. Simon also mentioned the fact
that the Scaffold (of Lily the Pink
fame) sung on an advert for the brewery, which went out on the TV. I don’t know
much about the Scaffold except that they seemed a bit of a joke band and
featured Paul McCartney’s brother, but they didn’t seem to mind being
associated with Watneys (perhaps this was just before the Red Barrel fiasco).
However just for the record here are the words of the ad, which makes me think
that Stella had travelled a long away when they turned to French movies for
their inspiration…

We’ll drink a drink a drink/To
make you think a think a think/Of Watney’s Pale, The greatest a-a-ale,/So you
can keep your medicinal compound Now we’ve discovered Watney’s Pale.

W-e-e-e’ll drink a drink a
drink/To make you think a think a think,/Of Watney’s Pale, The greatest ale.

Saturday, 8 December 2012

I love the Czech Republic, love the cities, love the countryside, love the people and naturally adore the beers produced over there. I seem to have visited quite a lot in the last couple of years and produced a fair few stories: this is the latest one, on Pilsen (the entrance to Pilsner Urquell, right), which appears in today’s Daily Mail here. As the sun streams in through the window I wouldn’t mind taking myself off to Klub Malych Pivovaru in the city to enjoy a couple of 12˚ pale lagers or heading out to the city limits to Purkmistr, where one of the best beer festivals in Europe happens every September. Instead I’m at home, but there is a bottle of Konrad’s 12˚ pale lager chilling in the fridge. Let’s see what happens.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

Pale and pure Helles gold in colour, New Zealand hops leap
out of the glass with the grace of a gazelle filled with the joy of life
unaware that the same skill will be called on to escape a lion the next day; a
joyful crushing of white grapes in the hand, the imagined fragrance of the
scented, sage-like brush of the Corsican marquis. Hey it’s 7% but in the mouth
the feel is elegant, full without being coarse (a greatcoat as designed by Paul
Smith perhaps), grape must sweetness, gooseberry jelly delicacy with a nod
towards sourness and earthiness, grapefruit, adult parma violets even, all
trifled with by the hard-backed dryness of the desert, white pepper bitterness,
both contributing to a finish that thunders at the back of the throat, the
echoes of the hooves of herd of wild horses long after they’ve passed. I was
sent this from Dark Star’s brewmeister Mark Tranter, who was very proud of what
he did with Simon at BBF. The use of the white wine casks in which the beer has
aged is a bit of a change from the usual whisky/rum/brandy cask finish and it
does give the beer a lighter touch than its abv would suggest. Its beers like
this that remind me of unorthodox bands I would hear on John Peel late at night,
fusing this and that and making sense of the mix. If there’s ever a moment when
I feel a bit bored with what’s going on in beer then something like Southern
Conspiracy beats me up and throws me on the floor and suggests I go outside to
carry on the discussion, a suggestion I willingly comply with.

Friday, 30 November 2012

For me Elizabeth David remains one of the most compelling
food writers ever (despite the fact that I think her influence might have been detrimental to postwar beer). I read her books constantly and this morning while flicking
through An Omelette and a Glass of Wine I started reading this essay about
Edouard de Pomaine, a French food writer and scientist. According to David he
was not a fan of fancy French cooking and described Homard à l’amércaine as ‘a
cacophony…it offends a basic principle of taste.’ However, what really
interested me was the rest of the paragraph from David: I rather wish he had
gone to work on some of the astonishing things Escoffier and his contemporaries
did to fruit. Choice pears masked with chocolate sauce and cream, beautiful
fresh peaches smothered in raspberry purée and set around with vanilla ice seem
to me offences to nature, let alone art or basic principles. How very rum that
people still write of these inventions with breathless awe. My point? If you substitute the word fruit with beer then
you might get what I’m driving at. There’s a fine line between innovation and
novelty and sometimes I don’t think some brewers get it.

Thursday, 29 November 2012

Don’t really know Kent. Seen more of it from the window of a Euro-star than anything else, though went through Canterbury many years ago and
saw it through the glass of a ferry-bound coach. Never been to Faversham but I
have been to Whitstable; I managed to avoid the oysters; never been to that
seaside place where whelks are definitely the dish to die for either. Been to one
brewery. Back in 2006. It was Westerham Brewery for the MOS Live magazine;
wasn’t used in the end though they paid me handsomely and sent a snapper out
there (it happens, ‘the mix isn’t right’, ‘our competitor just ran the same
story’, ‘the editor doesn’t like men in beards’ etc).

‘It’s a wet, grey winter’s day in the heart of rural
northern Kent. The trees are bare and lifeless, buffeted by a freezing wind
hurling itself straight from Siberia. The fields around Grange Farm at Crockham
Hill are ridged and furrowed, waiting for the first shoots of spring. Ahead of
me lies an elegant Queen Anne farmhouse and behind it a jumble of barns and stables.
A brace of horses are led steaming to their quarters after an early morning
gallop. It’s a timeless, comforting scene – a little piece of old England
untouched by modern life.’

So that was my vision of Kent and the article continued.

So Kent, why Kent? I recently bolted down Gadds’ Dogbolter
with the ferocity of a man whose first name is Thirst. I’ve enjoyed Shepherd Neame’s Celebration. Kent continued to hove into view with the arrival of Shepherd Neame’s Double Stout and IPA in
the postbox (the postman won’t deliver to the door anymore because of our dogs,
one of which, a 10 year old horror of a Parson Jack Russell, has a penchant for
biting packages). Two beers, both of which I am told are just the first of the
brewery’s trawl through the archives.

In the silence of a late Sunday afternoon, I poured a glass
of the Double Stout and it was a soothing and smooth cranial massage on the
temple of the weekend’s end. I loved it. I loved the chocolate (milk) and
creamy coffee nose; I also loved its undertone of raisin/current fruitiness. I loved
the luxurious mouth-feel with more chocolate, coffee and dark fruit. I loved
its darkness and its sense of the earth at night. I look forward to more.

As it happened Westerham also sent me something of Kent, a
mini keg of British Bulldog, which I haven’t had for several years — but
looking at my tasting notes then I espie: ‘Earthy, oily, citrusy, hint of
tropical fruit, cereal crunchiness in background. Dry, bitter, hangs onto the
throat.’ I have yet to open it but I will be interested to see what I get. I was also sent a mini-keg of Spirit of Kent,
which, during the summer, became the brewery’s first permanent beer for several
years; it uses nine different Kent bred and Kent grown hops. This I did
breach last night, aiming to bring some Kent to the dark Exmoor chilliness of
night. There was a distinct swing of the compass about the nose, as it
touched all points citrus sweetness (mandarin), earthiness and pungent hop
sack. The palate carried a refrain of similar mandarin sweetness (orange jelly
for adults), a muscular earthiness (think big Burgundies), a slight of almond
and a dry bitter finish. A Spitfire garnishes the pump clip and I can think of
no better analogy for this beer than the purring beauty of that aircraft’s
Merlin engine when in full flight.

Saturday, 24 November 2012

Last week my review of Pete Brown’s Shakespeare’s Local appeared in the books pages of the Daily Telegraph, which you can read here. As is normal it was cut to fit the page but I thought it might be fun to let people read the whole review, so here it is.

Shakespeare’s Local

By Pete Brown

384pp, Macmillan (RRP £16.99, EBOOK
£9.85)

****

This is a book about a pub: the George Inn
in Southwark. The George has been around in one form or another for five
centuries. Hidden away off Borough High Street, with the Shard piercing the sky
to its front, it’s especially unique in being London’s last galleried coaching
inn. I’ve been there several times: it’s a rickety old place, listing like an
ancient ship of the line, its galleries tipsily overlooking the yard where
tourists drink deeply of Ye Olde England. Charles Dickens drank here, as did Dr
Johnson. The Globe was just around the corner so Shakespeare probably popped
in, which why we’ve got this catchy little title.

Pete Brown is one of the UK’s leading beer
writers and has three beer-centric books to prove it. His last one was Hops and
Glory, in which he transported a barrel of India Pale Ale to India on a variety
of boats (to replicate the 19th century trading route). It was a
unique tale of leaky casks, banana boats, mid-ocean madness and lots of beer.
It won him Beer Writer of the Year 2009, but this time, this London-based
Yorkshireman hasn’t strayed too far.

Why the George? It might be a survivor but
it’s not the oldest London inn. It’s not the most historic either. However,
Brown choose it because as he writes early in the book: ‘there are
arguably more celebrated pubs…but if you are going to focus on the story of one
pub, you’ve got to pick the one that tells the best story.’

And stories he tells. Princess Margaret
came for Sunday lunch in the 1960s with the Bishop of Southwark; the newspapers
wagged fingers as only they can after the Princess and her group seemed to
carry on way past closing time. Winston Churchill dined here, bringing his own
port though he met his match in redoubtable landlady Agnes Murray, who served
from 1871 until 1934.

‘He once turned up for dinner with a
bottle of quality port, explaining to Miss Murray that on his last visit there
was none. She served him with a quiet smile, and then presented him with a
bill, which included “Corkage: one shilling and sixpence”.’

So did Shakespeare visit the George? Brown
believes so, but he also writes: ‘did Shakespeare perform plays at the George?
Much as it pains me to say so, probably not.’ You could argue that the book
title is somewhat of a red herring as it suggests that the book might be a
keenly argued thesis on Shakespeare’s relationship with the George. It’s not.
Think Julie Myerson’s Home instead,
applied to a pub and written in Brown’s matey, down to earth slightly tipsy man
at the bar style (his footnotes are hilarious).

It’s lively and exuberant, a literary
version of a cracking pub crawl. It recounts the history of the George and its
people, but also delightfully digresses to the social history of Southwark
while celebrating those who have walked and drank in its streets over the
centuries. From puritans to prime ministers, princesses to poets, the George
has seen them all. Though I’m not sure I’d have liked a drink with 18th
century regular, the poet Sir John Mennis: his speciality was writing about
flatulence.

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

In a high-ceilinged wood-panelled room, tall windows
overlooking the frenetic human chessboard of Grand Place, a man talks:
‘Belgium is a small country that likes to conquer with beer and food.’ There is
then talk about Pils being on the decline in the country and craft beer sales
starting to grow; the backslapping continues with news of the success of beer
exports. This then starts me off thinking and recalling several other strands
of thought from people I had tapped into over the past couple of years: is
Belgian beer sitting on a time bomb? The following couple of days
judging at the Brussels Beer Challenge while talking beer and drinking beer and
being beer reminded me that there might be something in the future of Belgian
beer that needs to be addressed in the near future (or it might even be
addressed now, as those in the Belgian brewing industry in that room were well
aware of the issue).

For those for whom beer is an infrequent source of either
refreshment or liquid pleasure, I would guess that for them Belgian beer rests
on a nest of laurels laid there by the likes of Leffe, Chimay, Stella and Kwak
(nice glass, that would look good on the sideboard mum, perhaps next to the
faux wineskin gran brought back from Spain in the 1970s) plus whatever sweet
gueuze you can get in those tiny shops that dot the centre of Brussels (this is
Belgian beer in the same way visitors to Munich during Oktoberfest probably see
Paulaner as representative of Bavarian beer). Outside the city, beyond the
trails of tourists checkmating their bodies around the Grand Place, more
enterprising brewers are throwing in hops, inculcating yeast strains, aging and
withering their beers, turning them inside out and op, applying a variety of
grains and spices and then selling their wares to America and other parts of
Europe rather than to the local café, where the regulars like their Jupiler. I think I first was aware of this trend when visiting one
small brewer in 2006 and learning that the majority of his beers went to the US.

There are some great Belgian breweries, both craft and
longer established, but I sometimes feel that the country is eclipsed by what is happening elsewhere and that some of its more established brewers are happy to sit back, look at their fob watches and think ‘we are Belgian’ in a German or Czech manner, but after my sojourn in Brussels I’m starting to have these thoughts: might
Belgian beer find itself in a bit of a pickle if overseas’ markets collapse?

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

What is the sound and vision of the brewery? The humming round-and-round-we-go
nnnnnnnn of the python coolers, a spinning top of ambient Eno-esque sound in
perpetual motion — the sharp clink of bottles as a silent woman lures the beer
in and traps it with a deft appliance of a crown cork — over there look, the ragged,
tattered banner of steam escapes from a vent in the stainless steel container
that we call the HLT — two plastic bags (once they held grain from Tuckers Maltings) of used hops slouch teenage-style on the concrete and add a welcome
bright banana and pineapple disturbance to the air about them. I only see it briefly
when adding a pestle of partly ground black peppercorns, grains of paradise and
dried Curacao orange peel into the copper, but the rhythmic Jacob’s Ladder of
the boil, the repetitive climb and decline of the hot liquid that one day will
be cool and fermented, strong and spicy, dark and downsized into a glass and
eager to create an impression on the palate of a drinker whom I shall never
meet.

A few minutes I had on my hands whilst assisting with
another brew of Otley’sSaison Obscura and a scrap of paper on which to allow a
few words to meander on the nature of what constitutes a brewery. Every impression
of a brewery that I visit is different.

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Good lord a competition, the chance to win a copy of Chris
Arnot’s superb Britain’s Lost Breweries and Beers. I got sent one and thought it might be nice to get the publishers to give away a couple — I
did it for Home Brew a couple of years ago. It’s a lovely book,
nostalgic in its recollection of breweries and their beers long gone, but on
the other hand it’s not dewy-eyed and the author makes the point that currently we’ve never had it so good in our choice of both British and global beers. It is also a social history, a recollection of memories, a compendium of both
black-and-white and colour photos (then and now) and the beers that made the
likes of Simpkiss, Fremlin’s and Vaux such favourites with the home crowd.
These were breweries at the centre of their communities, employing hundreds of
locals and sending out beers up and down the county (and in some cases further
afield) to their own pubs. There are 30 breweries remembered and I have tried
beers from 11 of them (this includes Tolly, Morrell’s and Hardy & Hanson’s)
and even managed to visit two of them (Young’s and Gale’s), though I once
turned up in Oxford several years before Morrell’s closed in the hope of
getting in but the gates were shut. With such a vibrant brewing industry
whizzing up and down the land, it’s important to remember those that went
before — and this book is a crucial aid in not forgetting.

So if you would like to win a copy, just email me at
tierneyjonesATbtinternet.com with the answer to this question: where did
Tamplin’s brew? First two to email me win.

Monday, 5 November 2012

This is where Duvel is brewed. It’s a space that reminds me of both a factory and a weird
imagined space age emporium; high windows let the light in, but on the evening
of my visit they keep the night at bay. There are metal pipes and tanks, a
forest of pipes, a tenacity of tanks; a capacious submarine with its turbine
and torpedo tubes and for just a moment I imagine the pitch and sway and roll
of the sea, before coming to the hop store, where despite the tightly packed
intimacy of sealed foiled packets, cardboard boxes, the aroma of the family of
hops that Moortgat uses is a fragrant friendly ghost drifting through the air.

Sunday, 4 November 2012

A weekend spent in Brussels, tasting beer as part of the
jury for the inaugural Brussels Beer Challenge; 30 or so judges from the UK, Europe,
China, the US and Canada; 35 beers on Friday morning, 37 on Saturday (the
results are here). The massed ranks of ambers parading across Friday morning, a
well-organised drill of warm toffee, lemon sherbet and — sign of the times
indeed — US hops. Amber is a type of beer that has often eluded me with its
commonplace reliance on malt and its anonymous fruitiness; but the tasting that
I took through 20 of these beers on Friday morning produced a greater
appreciation even if I scribbled notes such as ‘primitive’, ‘very safe’ and
‘uninspiring’ besides some of the beers. On the other hand, one of my
favourites had warm toffee on the palate, while the nose of the table’s winner
rang and chimed away with the light tones of US hops (it was our winner and can be revealed as Caldera Ashland Amber ). And one of the things that I learnt
from this excellent competition was that it’s ok to spit. Even though I’ve been
judging beer for years, I rarely use the spittoon, adhering to the old saw that
to properly evaluate the beer you had to swallow. This time I was able to taste
more of the beer, holding it in my mouth, swilling it about and then spitting.
I loved the moment it spent in mouth as a variety of flavours ebbed and flowed
and were recorded before the liquid was jettisoned. It’s just as well: Saturday
morning saw our table being presented with a nefarious host of dark beers,
including Baltic Porter and Imperial Stout. Sometimes it’s good to let go.

Thursday, 1 November 2012

Stuart Howe at Sharps sent
me a bottle of DW, which he had brewed in collaboration with the late Dave Wickett.
I thought I’d drink it. I’ve had it when it was younger but this was older and had had time to settle. On the nose, a filmic contrast between a scowling, tough, dockyard
dweller, neckerchief wearing, shoulder bulging, granite-like hardness Belgian and
a Jean Genet type, implacably bald, beret-wearing, muscle-bound with a sailor hat
atop: there is ayeastiness,
fruitiness, peachiness; a peach dessert sweetness on the nose; a dessert wine
Muscat swipe on the nose, a dirty troll like dig into the hop sack on the nose;
it is vinous, vine-like, Vinland-like, Varus vs the barley hordes, my big fat
barley beer, the idea of the Rhine as a boundary between wine and beer;sweetness, dessert wine London
clubland, the femininity of Muscat.

And so I drank it. Fatness, sweetness, dryness,
sweetness I was only joking, smokiness, peachiness, round ripe peaches, the
dryness of the mouth’s assault on the ripe skin of a peach, the release of
juice, an RSM of hop bitterness bawling from across the parade ground to keep
all things in order; the marmalade sweetness glides across the brioche like breadiness
and big fat uncle Charlie — just about keeping himself in order — bawls along,
saying all the wrong things, but we all know we love him. And it all ends as it
should end: with a big alcoholic wave of papaya, pineapple, Billy Smart big top
ring sawdust dryness and then a wonderful world tucks you into your bed.

Monday, 22 October 2012

Some of the best breweries I’ve visited sit in the middle of
nowhere: Dupont, Kacov, Hook Norton and now Wild Beer Company, to where I
walked for a couple of miles up and down country lanes on Saturday (home is
hidden away somewhere between Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet, right on the
eastern edge of Somerset, in a lovely little hamlet called Westcombe). The day
was a sort of launch for the brewery, a chance to try some of their beers, to
engage with their ideas, to meet up with the like-minded. Fresh was their
signature pale ale, a button-popping, corset-stretching joy of a juicy,
luscious beer with a bitter, dry, peppery finish. It was gorgeous. Scarlet Claw
was a red ale, with Centennial in the boil and finished off with Simcoe.
The malt bill is also intruging — Mild ale and Brown plus CaraAroma and
CaraRed from Weyermann in Bavaria. It had a slightly creamy texture, silky
almost, with lots of voluptuous grapefruit and pineapple notes, but also a
delicious hint of what I can only describe as cherry-flavoured toffee. And then
to the beer that Wild men Andrew and Brett descibe as ‘what we are all about’.
Modus Operandi is described as an old ale that is then aged in wood and has
wild yeast chucked into the mix. The earthy, chocolaty, Bretty, herbal, woody,
vinous, cherry and balsamic vinegar nose just stunned me with its
complexity. In the mouth it was a case of chocolate going off the rails, Brett
in the train’s cabin pulling all the levers, while earthy sexiness, chocolate, cherry and soft vanilla passed through all the carriages before arriving with the sort of bitter finish that makes you realise why you like beer and want to
keep drinking it. Or to put it another way, melodic and harmonic but strong willed in its character — Mahlerian perhaps. Possibly
one of the best beers I’ve had this year and yet another indication of the way British craft brewers are really starting to up their game. If you’re in the vicinity of Bristol this week, I hear some is being delivered to the Colston Yard…

You’ll find Wild Beer just right of the photo’s centre, in that little hamlet on the side of the hill

Thursday, 11 October 2012

In the post the postman brings a copy of The World Atlas of Beer by Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb, their attempt to cover what’s happening in
the world of craft beer (I would have added ‘at the moment’, but things are
moving so fast that the book can only provide a snapshot of a moment in time,
something that Webb acknowledged when he wrote about the book in the British
Guild of Beer Writers newsletter last month here).

It’s a gorgeous production, luxuriant and lush with photos of fields of barley caught in the sway, men and
women on the mash and bronzed, Adonis-like streams of beer flowing with a
Gambrinus-like sense of freedom. Webb and Beaumont are for my money two of the
best beer-writers on the planet — forensic in their attention to detail, wry stylists and both
imbued with years of traipsing round breweries, talking to people and drinking
the beer. If Michael Jackson rediscovered Belgium’s great brewing heritage,
then Tim in the manner of a Pointillist painter filled in all the dots;
Stephen’s elegant brushstrokes of colour on beer, gastronomy and travel sometimes reminds me of Van Dyke or Reubens.

As the book’s title suggests, it
covers the world, shining a spotlight on 35 countries and their beers. As with
most books of this nature there are sections at the front about the raw materials and
brewing modes, a couple of spreads about craft beer plus one spread about ‘High
Volume Brewing and Convenience Beers’, which has long been missing in beer
books (when I edited 1001 Beers I included several beers of this ilk because I
felt they needed to be there, they couldn’t ignored).

Here’s Tim Webb second from left at the British Guild of Beer Writers awards in 2005 withMichael Jackson, John Keeling (far right) andAlastair Gilmour (left)

A page is also given to
styles and it’s clear that the authors are not fetishistic about this subject. This para is a good summation of their beliefs: ‘Unfortunately this
(beer styles) approach has evolved into a morass of confusion and obfuscation,
with it seeming at times as if every new beer is awarded its own unique style
descriptor’.

It’s a delicious book, over which I have been drooling over and delving into for several
days. If I have only one criticism it’s this: modern publishing likes photos,
usually at the expense of text, it’s about connecting with a modern audience we’re told. Given the two writers’ expertise and pleasing
manner of expressing themselves I could have done with more of their words.

While we’re on the written word, I’ve also
been sent the second issue of a magazine called Doghouse, which styles itself
as the pub and café magazine. It has lovely production values, a pleasing
aroma of paper, is thick and just right to read in the pub, has an avalanche of words tumbling over the edge of the
precipice, photos of pubs that you might want to enter and others you might
want to give a miss, has the size and feel of Wallpaper, swells with an
infectious liveliness and in this issue focuses on the borders and Marches
of Herefordshire, but I am told by the editor that it will move about. It’s a
valuable record of pub life, whimsical and occasionally rambling, but well
worth looking out for. It’s £4.99 and I’d recommend going here to find out more.

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Back from running, where on the way, I passed a stable, and
on the fence, nicely folded, was a horse blanket, while from inside their boxes
the two horses looked out at the world into which they would soon be ridden.
The phrase horse blanket when used in relation to lambic is well-worn and
perhaps spun out when the nearest the writer has got to a horse is some
well-seasoned mince on a trip to Belgium (I seem to recall Martyn Cornell
writing something on this recently). So I stopped and took a deep sniff,
there’s nothing like original research. And what did I find? Manure, not
unpleasant, the lure of the organic garden, old wet straw, autumn, earthiness,
upturned soil perhaps after a shower of rain, horse’s sweat, like damp leather
perhaps, a deep pungent strangely pleasing aroma that as I started running
again I was able to fix onto my memories of lambic. It’s an aroma that has a
lot in common with the orange, pine, banana and lychee notes we get on beer for
instance, an aroma rooted in the land, a primary aroma that hasn’t been baked
or manufactured (think biscuity or mocha for starters). And yes you can pick it out on some lambics but I do urge you to stop and smell next time you’re near a
stable.

PS the use of the word blanket denotes something cosy and
comforting but I often think that horse blankets are more like anoraks, which brings us back to
beer.

Monday, 8 October 2012

I did a lot of travelling last month, about which you can
read here, here and here. My next trip is a bit more modest, at the start of
November, to Brussels to act as judge in the first Brussels Beer Challenge. It
seems like serious stuff — there are judges coming in from all over the world,
including Beer Advocate’s Alström brothers, the ‘Beer Pope’ Conrad Seidl and the co-writers of The World
Atlas of Beer Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont. It should be fun. Reason I’m
mentioning the event is that the closing date for submitting beer to be judged
is this coming Friday and I know that the organisers would like to see more
British beers. So, I’m doing my public service thing for the event (for which I
am not being paid, though accommodation, travel and sustenance is being
covered) — if you’re a brewer (or the friend of a brewer) then maybe it’s worth
having a look to see whether you should enter. I don’t normally do
John-Bull-howay-the-lads patriotism, but it would be nice to see some Brit
beers amongst the winners.

Friday, 28 September 2012

Years ago I used to earn a few quid (a very few quid) by proof-reading book manuscripts from an esoteric publishing house in Dorset. One of the books I seem to remember posited a grand unified theory of everything that not only brought in science but also spirituality and otherworldy happenings. Apparently this was a bit of a Holy Grail in the New Age community — sort of like Stephen Hawkings and ghost stories and levitation all in one.

When I hear figures high up in the beer marketing industry talk in similarly swivel eyed evangelic tones, I guess I am hearing pleas for a unified theory of beer — it’s all beer and we must support it all to beat off the big bad wolf of tax, neo-prohibitionists, wine drinkers and the nanny state. There is no such thing as bad beer. I beg to differ. Yes there is and it’s not just those beers with sweetcorn on the nose. There are cask beers I regard as poor, while some craft keg can come across as chilled hop juice. However, bad beer or not it’s up to people to make their choice. I won’t be looking in through the windows of their homes and pulling a face at them.

The upcoming Independent Manchester Beer Convention is one of the most exciting beer events for ages (and sadly I cannot make it). However, looking at the beer list, if it were embracing a unified theory of beer, the convention would also be selling John Smith, Carling, Newcastle Brown Ale, the usual suspects of cask beer and remaindered bottles of Animee, which it isn’t. I hope that the convention will kick off a new model of beer festival (operating in tandem with the more conventional ones), and it also has a pleasing and refreshing bias in the beers it has picked. No unified theory of beer here and rightly so.

And while I’m in beer philosophy mode, my only comment on how to define what craft beer is: it’s like defining love. You know when you’re in love, you don’t need a guide or guides to tell you so. I know that London Pride isn’t craft (which doesn’t mean it’s bad), but the Past Masters series is, while every new brewery that claims to be craft isn’t but some might just be.

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

The barrel stands, a one eyed elephant god, an Oliphaunt that haunted the Hobbits so much, a sentinent god ready to surprise or is it a god long ago
turned into stone, its graven image now made use of by Aylinger? Metal bands
encase it and hold its spirit in, leaving it bulging at the belly; its one eye
looks raw and crusty, giving me a sense of sadness; but wait there is its brassy brass font that speaks for its
individuality, its specialness, but also its lonesomeness. It’s Aylinger’s Fest beer, a spicy, minerally, tangy kind of beer, handled from a wooden barrel in a place that gives me a respite from the madness of the Oktoberfest. Yes please I will have another one — and the barrel shall continue with its devotional life affirming sense of being.

Friday, 21 September 2012

Three brewpubs in northern Bohemia in one day and they all share
something that strikes me: the use of the brewing kit as a showpiece for the
drinkers and eaters. Instead of a band making a racket, there’s a copper faced
stainless steel kit taking centre stage in the bar or the dining room, and when
the brewer works the drinker or diner can amuse themselves by watching someone
make the beer, the ancestor of which is already in their glass. At Minipivovar Labut in the beautiful town of Litoměřice, the kit is behind the bar, a silent
irreproachable presence as the barman pours glasses of the two-year-old
brewery’s fulsome 10˚ pale lager and its bounty of banana custard and bubblegum
that is their Weiss. Onwards to the edge of town and the Hotel Koliba and
Pivovarek Koliba, where the kit stands in a dining hall that has been turned
into a hunting lodge where antlers and horns and stuffed game birds (as
well as the odd agricultural equipment) decorate the walls as if the room was
vying to be some sort of homage to St Hubertus. It’s a small kit, producing 200
litres at a time, but what brings a smile to my face is that as it stands on one
side of the room, its presence reminds me of a drum kit or even a strangely
perverse organ, at which the brewer/musician entertains people while they eat
and drink. ‘Do people come and ask about the brewing,’ I say to the brewmaster
Ondrej Klir. He nods as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. We escape
this Valhalla to taste his beers in the fermenting room beneath and I find his Czech-American Pale Ale a striking
mash up of bright hop notes and floral aromas and one of the better pale ales
I’ve had in the current climate of Czech new wave brewing (at tomorrow’s Slunce ve Skle festival at Purkmistr in Pilsen we shall find out how far this new wave has come). And finally we end
up at the town of Usti nad Labem at Na Rychte, a traditionally boisterous
restaurant and brewery where the kit stands like a rock opposite the bar, a
rock on which the voices of the roistering drinkers and diners crash upon like
waves upon the shore. This is a 1000-litre kit on which the brewer Martina
Valternova produces several excellent beers including a superb 12˚ pale lager,
which is as good an expression of the Saaz hop as I have had for a long time.
There’s caramel sweetness on the palate and a ringing singing tingle of
bitterness and dryness wrapping up the finish. I found that it’s the perfect
chaperone to a plate of roast duck, red cabbage and peculiarly cone-shape
dumplings that are a speciality to the region I am told. And while we eat, the
kit stands sentinel in the dark wooded beer hall ambience, ready and steady for
the next brew. Ready for showtime. Who needs musicians, magicians or a comedian
when you can have a brewer weaving their own particular kind of magic?

Thursday, 20 September 2012

Racing pub I think as soon as I enter, let’s study the Racing Times, keep an eye on the telly, Great Yarmouth, where’s that, by the sea I seem to remember; remember remember the ghost of the smoke that once drifted through the impure air, but let’s turn to the roast joint, a more amenable aroma, sitting as it does in a glass cabinet, in which it keeps warm. This pub is full of noises: the scuff of shoes on the well sanded floor, a local reading the DT and clearing his throat with a great rebel yell of impending emphysema, while others at the bar exchange confidences in the manner of a serenading Louis Armstrong. I see a picket fence of fonts for the likes of Murphy’s, Sagres, Stella, Heineken while Greene King IPA and Brakspears Bitter do the cask swing. I also see a big hunk of cheese (Cheddar yellow, a bouncy kind of cheese perhaps), tomatoes, roast spuds on a plate with roast meat. I also see: racing prints, fine art in the manner of, on the wall. I taste the Brakspears; it’s fresh and has that feral, rustic, hedgerow deep Churchillian growl of bitterness that I always associate with British hops. Meanwhile, matey by the door eats his roast and spuds and already drives his memory into the future by reminiscing about his forthcoming trip to Madeira (club sandwich and chips and a few glasses of wine and me and the missus are sorted) that kicks off tomorrow (and I’ll be in a week on Friday to tell you all about it). This is not the sort of pub in which I want to spend the rest of my life but I like its raffish, Irish, old fashioned, dig-in-the-ribs, mind-the-locals, Paddington-is-a-funny-old-place, I’m-a-security-guard-but-I-live-in-a-mews kind of character that I seem to remember in 1980s London, a time when old pubs became cocktail bars but somehow ones like this one seem to survive. Racing pubs I thought when I first entered, how wrong was I.

Wednesday, 19 September 2012

Beer culture? What is beer culture? Some might argue that
it’s about the liquid in the glass and the approach that the brewer has taken
and how the drinker conjoins with it. It’s perhaps about what the brewer has
done within the cloisters of the workplace, the ideas that have created the
beer; it’s the experiences, the memories, the everyday life, the homework and
the rote learning all distilled into the brew; some brewers might be like
inspired songwriters or clever wordsmiths such as Paul Heaton and others like
session musicians who turn up day after day and play the same sequence of notes
(not necessarily a bad thing as some of the best musicians in the world are
sessioneers).

As for the drinker, is beer culture about how they approach
the beer in their glass, how they have a relationship with it, how they treat
the world when they think about it or drink it or place a plate of ribs in
front of it or sit in an armchair closeted from the world, the glass to hand.
Others might throw in the environment in which the beer is drank, the ambience
of the place where the beer is enjoyed (or maybe isn’t enjoyed), the glare of
the light that moonwalks across the stage of whatever drinking space in which
the drinker happens to enjoy their beer.

Is it also about the words that are exchanged about the beer
like tokens of affection? Or maybe, on the other hand, the words about the
beer, whether in the hand or in someone else’s, are like missiles thrown at the
police during an inner city riot. Beer’s like that, it encourages words to be
tossed about, chucked up in the air, stamped on the floor, taken through the
gutter and hung out to dry. Words soothed and smoothed like soft fur, fed on
ripe corn, fattened up for slaughter and then they’re gone.

For others beer culture is the route beer takes to get from
the people who make it, through the hands of the people who encourage people to
try it, en route touching the hands of people who pay for the space in which
the beer is made and the face that it shows to the world, before finally the
beer laps into the glasses of the people who will pay for it — a journey
perhaps with brightly coloured scraps and flags left at various stations along
this passage calling out to people that this beer will make them more than they
are.

And of course there’s the fury and the fire of the campaign,
the broad bland outstretch palm smile of the evangelist and the educator, the
sorter out of the wheat from the chaff, the ones that aim to bring order to the
world of beer culture in the same way perhaps an art teacher would have loved
to teach Picasso how to paint. There’s the time lord in search of what was lost and is found again, an arrow of time flying backwards and forwards. And finally there is the culture of beer
culture, the historiography, the methodology, a place where beer culture is
dissected like a frog in a school laboratory.

Friday, 14 September 2012

Last year I spent a week travelling around southern Bohemia by bus and train, visiting bars and breweries in an attempt to get to the nature of the beers of the area. Ironically enough, next week I head off to the north this time. Last year my trip ended up at the The Sunshine in the Glass (Slunce ve skle) Beer Festival at Purkmistr Brewery, Pilsen, and this year I will do the same on September 22 (before I travel to Munich for an Oktoberfest assignment). My report on last year’s journey is in tomorrow’s Telegraph Travel but you can read it online here. As for the beer festival, if you can make it I would as it’s fabulous and features the best of what I call the new wave of Czech brewing (but those in the heart of it, such as Evan Rail and Max at Pivni Filosof, might call it something else), more details here.

Thursday, 13 September 2012

Three police officers wander into the bar, nonchalant, not
in need of any information, just with the aim of sitting down and ordering a drink. Glass of water for
one, coffee for another and a schooner of beer for the other. A cat strolls
past, ambient and distracted in its poise, while an elderly couple make their way
along the atelier-like balcony above the pub; the Levi’s blue light from a
torch is their only guide. Ah here comes my beer, a half-litre of darkness with a
massive espresso coloured head, the sort of head you want to dive into with the
abandonment of a dolphin and emerge with a Franz Josef beer moustache. It’s all
liquorice, toast with plum jam, mocha and a grainy bit of bitterness in the
finish with hints of chocolate truffle. It’s a very accomplished beer this
glass of Tomislav, which according to Rate Beer is a Baltic Porter, though the
nearest body of water to the bar in Zagreb where I am having a drink is the
Adriatic, so an Adriatic Porter it is then. Earlier in the evening yet another
brewery, the brewpub Zlatni Medo, a German beer hall lookalike, all dark wood
with square cut furniture, the brewing equipment encased in its own space as
you enter from the front. The first brewery I have ever been into where a
massive bearskin sits atop one of the stainless steel brewing vessels (though
the brewery’s name translated is golden bear). The Pilsner is unfiltered and
has an unmistakeable Saaz spicy lemony character, though somewhat muted. It’s a
clean beer, with a medium body, a halfway house between Czech and German and
rather good. With roast potatoes, beans and the pub’s own home made sausage
(juicy, bridging salt and meaty sweetness, with a chunky yet pliable texture), it’s
a robust and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the muscular gastronomic attractions of Zagreb.

Monday, 10 September 2012

Here’s the delivery man with a large package, it’s beer mate he says without too much surprise, as he’s a regular. Yes it’s beer, a mini cask of Sharps’ Hayle Bay Honey IPA, which I cannot wait to try but given that it’s 10am I think I’ll wait a few hours. And I did wait and then spent Friday and Saturday in contemplation. I liked it, I liked it a lot, I liked the glorious contrast between the pungent sexy aroma of the hop and a more delicate lycee note that brought to mind the sort of sketches Picasso used to knock out on the back of a napkin (I once met someone who had one but then he’d lost it in the war). It’s a rough and refined nose at once, one you could argue represents the character of its maker. It’s a bittersweet, robust, chunky beer, sometimes rough and ready and then gentle and persuasive. It’s a tropical fruit celebration such as ripe mango and lycee and a delightful breakfast platter of brioche sweetness. It’s got a swagger and strut that reminds me of those films of Jagger onstage at the end of the 60s, or maybe go back further in time to sweet Gene Vincent. This is a beer with attitude, an altitude, a big rocker of a beer that mashes up sweetness and suaveness and the sexiness of ripe fruit skin all in one glorious go.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

What’s my favourite pub? What are my five favourite pubs? What makes a pub perfect? Would you like another pint? If you want to know a bit more then why not have a look at today’s Daily Telegraph, page 19, in which I have written about the perfect pub — or go to the article here.

Friday, 31 August 2012

And so a glass of mild it is, a dark sensuous looking
creature with a collar of foam the colour of freshly exposed apple flesh after one guilty bite.
Regulation toffee and mocha notes with a thin skein of orange existent just
over the taste horizon. The mild is 4.3%, so there is also a weight of alcohol
that you don’t normally find in weaker milds. However, there’s
also an acidity, a twang of sourness, a slight tartness suggestive of apple, which suggests to me that the beer is the first one pulled today (it was early afternoon)
and that it also might be a slow seller. So do I take it back? No, as I
don’t actually mind the staleness in the beer, in fact I think it makes it more
interesting and that leads onto another question. Would this have been
something similar to what stale porters tasted like in the 1800s? Who knows but it was enjoyable — and this then begs another question,
is it a case that some British cask beers retain a level of palatability (or even improve)
when they are on the turn?

Saturday, 18 August 2012

When I was young I had a credo about London: live there in my 20s and move out in my 30s, which is what I did. My time in London coincided with the rise of Wetherspoons and I used to spend a lot of time in the White Lion of Mortimer in Finsbury Park, a place where I discovered to my surprise that I enjoyed cask beer. As for London beer though, I think one of the few places I was aware of it was at the Fuller’s pub The Ship in Soho, otherwise that was it though I do recall driving my motorbike past Young’s at the end of the 1980s and being enthralled by the smell of brewing. Now of course, London is undergoing a massive brewing renaissance and you can read my take on it in today’s Daily Telegraphhere. Oh and while I’m at it, Will Hawkes’ Craft Beer London app is also well worth getting, and you can find more info here.

Friday, 17 August 2012

Here’s Ampleforth Abbey Ale, a couple of bottles of which I was sent and jolly glad I am too that I was sent them. Abbey Ale? I’m not going there and I’ve said my thing about the beer style here. So let’s just see what the beer has to say to me. Dark chestnut in colour, I’m reminded of hazelnut influenced chocolate on the nose; as if a hazelnut had met a piece of chocolate while out on the pull and decided that the two of them might be good for each other. Hold on, there’s a sarsaparilla note coming along to muck things up; thankfully all live happily ever after a civil ceremony that David Cameron agrees to following a pub lunch with Nick Clegg. On the palate it’s rich and varnished, vinous and virtuous, with its palatable sweetness kept in check by a raisiny caramelly and nutty character that shows what good malt and yeast can add to the mix. There’s some alcohol but not too much, just enough to get a sense of lift. There is also chocolate and very ripe dark plums with some sugar on them, all of which produce a bittersweet character that enables this companionable beer to dovetail totally with a Thai jungle curry I’d made on the evening of the tasting — the spice of the curry hits the bittersweetness of the beer and all retire happily to a tent in a clearing and discuss future relationships.

Thursday, 16 August 2012

Come and enjoy a gastronomic beer menu said the invitation.
Come and enjoy a menu worked out by Pete Brown and Charles Campion (see below for a few words from him to the night’s MC Nigel Barden) at Great Taste at the Cadogan, a plush old school hotel in the middle of Knightsbridge.
Come and enjoy some of the stars of the recent Great Taste Awards. Come and
enjoy food and beer in a place where wine is the preferred tipple on the table
most of the time. And so I went to the press launch of a menu that included beer in both the dishes and as accompaniment on the table.

Cider, however, instead of beer opened up the evening as
glasses of Aspalls’ Premier Cru were handed out as an aperitif before the
dining room yawned chasm-like to swallow the diners.

To begin at the beginning there were three starters which each table were
encouraged to share: mosaic (ok terrine) of rabbit in beer jelly, along with
pickled Scottish girolles and cabbage, cooked in Sunshine from Monty’s Brewery,
was paired with Otley’s O-Garden, whose jingle-jangle of spice got the
terrine’s spice and sweetness singing along with the unity of the Millennium
Stadium as they watch Wales surge forward time and time again. Treacle cured salmon with a
beer glaze of Ola Dubh 16 was a tough call and I found the O-Garden bowing down
in surrender before the oiliness of the fish (restrained as it was); it was
almost as if the beer and fish cancelled each other out and all I was left with
was a memory of the texture of the superbly cured salmon. Harmony reigned supreme
however with the third starter Cornish Blue cheese, cobnut caramel and beer
roasted shallots (Riggwelter). It was almost as if the cheese could not wait to
wrap itself around the beer and announce to a waiting world when the baby was
due.

Mains: squab pigeon pie with spinach parcels and butternut
squashcooked with Hobsons Old Henry. This was served alongside Purple Moose’s
Dark Side of the Moose, which all dark chocolate flavours that encircled themselves
around the dark meat and added another layer of flavour, almost as if acting as a
sauce. This was a good one. However, I had issues with the roasted sea-bass
that had a Quickes Vintage Cheddar and herb crust. I loved the accompanying Bristol Hefe
beer broth as the light bitterness of the Hefe meant that there was just enough
in the foam-a-like broth for it to work like the sort of dream you don’t want
to wake up from. The accompaniment was Bitter & Twisted, which I felt lost
out to the cheese and herb crust; my thoughts were that there wasn’t enough
carbonation to cut through the dairy-like fattiness of the cheese.

Then it was all the way to the puddings, three of which each
table had a taster of: the Beer float Dark Island Reserve was divine when drunk
in conjunction with the Ola Dubh 16 as all manner of dark flavours plus a
vanilla smoothness and tobacco box adulthood encouraged an air of
contemplation. The chocolate, prune and ale brownie (Old Engine Oil) also flew in the face of the oft-repeated assertion that dark beer and dark dessert shouldn’t be
on the same table. Rhubarb crumble with beer jelly (Meantime London lager) was a welcome
surprise, as the zinginess of Schiehallion lifted the flavour of the
crumble and spun it into another dimension of being (and that’s saying
something for me as due to being afflicted with a lot of it when young I’m not
the greatest fan of rhubarb).

Verdict: a fabulous menu, another step forward for beer and
food though a fellow beer-writer made the point to me that maybe it’s generally
accepted that food and beer works, and now it’s a question of what beers to
use? I thought of Byron Burgers and their craft beer selection for starters. This is thoroughly recommended bit of upscale dining with beer on the
table — why not treat yourself?

The menu is priced at £18 for
one-course; £23 for two-courses; and £28 for three-courses and will run until
the end of September 2012. There
will be an ongoing beer theme running at Great Taste at The Cadogan for the
rest of the year, along with the usual wine list.

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

The pub used to be a gastro I am told, which makes complete
sense when I look around the décor: stripped down oak floorboards the colour of
sand, Farrow and Ball style paint scheme on the wall (lamp room grey perhaps?),
lots of light coming in through the large latticed collection of glass panes,
an ironic mix of old school pub tables with metal clawed feet, seaside fish and
chip restaurant red banquettes and a couple of stools and their accompanying
tables that might have been made in the workshop at the local tech. The music
at the moment is In The Midnight Hour, not Wilson Pickett but more of a
Commitments’ version perhaps? Outside London passes by, buses, mopeds
defecating their shrill sound of two-stroke hell, off-white van man, Boris
bikes and Londoners going about their way, large, tall, fat, thin, small and
in-between. The bar is L-shaped, and I hazard a guess that before it was a
gastro it was a traditional boozer, the place where the racing might have been
on all day, the beer dispensed with a minimum of fuss and food limited to
whatever the licensee could forage in the local cash and carry. Outside the
Grand Union canal stills itself, a long dark green rippled skin of water
larging itself through this part of west London. The beer? I’ve just had a glass
of Redemption Pale Ale, and spent what felt like an eon (but was probably only
a couple of minutes) evalutating the ‘fruity’ nose. In the end I think of sensual ripe apricot skin with wisps of berry (raspberry) floating into the
action as well. The malty sweetness is caramel influenced and I also pick out
an edgy spike of spiciness reminiscent of rye; the finish is a dusty and grainy
dryness that turns the mouth into an agreeable sort of Sahara. For 3.8%, this
is a beer that really makes me want another. But there’s a lot of choice so (while
watching a man spear his salad into his mouth with the sort of lust that I
imagine only happened on some medieval killing field) I have a glass of Kernel’s
Centennial Columbus IPA — I can smell it across the bar as it is poured. We are
looking at a fragrance that I can only imagine as a cross between a hop field
where all the hop devils are hard at work night and day and the early morning descent
I once took, windows open, gentle breeze off the Med, after a night crossing
the Maritime Alps, into the town of Grasse. Oh and I’m in the Union Tavern,
Fuller’s tremendous take on a craft beer bar. Love it.